


Far across the Distance

by MercuryHomophony



Series: Behold the Field in Which I store my Headcannons (TAZ) [9]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Lup reconnects with her heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2018-12-30 18:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12114204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryHomophony/pseuds/MercuryHomophony
Summary: It takes her being back in a body before she really notices, but once she does, she won't stop until she's fixed it.ORLup realizes her boys have changed more than she thought.Based on a prompt from Mara: A piece about how Barry and Taako changed during their decade apart, but Lup stayed relatively the same, and how she reaches out to her boys again.





	1. Spaces Between Us

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a short, 3-4 chapter fic in the Reaper Family-verse.
> 
> Takes place sometime in the first year, after Ren makes her business proposal and Kravitz wins over the Raven Queen on Lup and Barry's behalf, but before the wedding.
> 
> Enjoy~!

The first time she notices it, Taako’s cooking something in the kitchen. She’s just gotten back from “work,” the hellish training regimen Kravitz has her and Barry running through. She’s argued that they’re plenty capable without it, and her probably-soon-to-be-brother-in-law has argued right back that if either of them die, they don’t get another life, and he won’t risk them in the field without full training.

It’s a pretty good reason. Still, training sucks.

So she staggers into the house - Kravitz had asked Barry to stay behind a little longer, to talk over something with him, she doesn’t know - and the first thing she notices is the smell, something savory wafting through the air from the kitchen, where she can hear the tell-tale rattle of cookware. After a long, grueling day of combat drills, she’s more than willing to let the scent guide her, cartoon-like, into the kitchen.

She’s not surprised to see Ren there. The younger elf had taken to following her brother like a duckling (a very competent, very business-savvy duckling). She looks up from her notes as Lup walks in, and smiles.

“Hey, Miss Lup.”

“Heya, Ren. Hey, dingus,” she replies. Taako, over by the stove, looks over his shoulder and sticks out his tongue cheekily.

“You’re the dingus, doofus!”

She returns the expression in a perfect mirror. “ _You_ _’re_ the doofus, dingus!” And she laughs at the grin on Taako’s face, enjoys the warm flutter of sensation in her gut at the sheer _happiness_ of just being alive again to tease him. She takes another deep breath, savoring the smell. “Mmm, Taako, you making Auntie’s jeweled pilaf?”

“You fucking bet, sister!” Taako gestures to the counter - half the work has been done already. The rice is simmering on the stove, the balsamic and herbs for it heated up to spread that warm, delectable smell. Onions and carrots sizzle in ghee on the stove, making her mouth water, and she cannot _wait_ to get a taste of them. Ever since she’s gotten her body back, gluttony and hedonism have sort of been her _thing._ Fortunately, she has a very understanding family, and they’ve indulged her the appetites she’s missed out on while being an umbrella.

There’s more work to be done for the pilaf, too. She can see he’s laid out the tree-nuts and almonds to be chopped ant toasted, and she clicks her tongue at the sight of cranberries and raisins that haven’t started soaking yet, or the pomegranate that lies completely unpeeled, and will certainly take more time to prepare than the rice will take to cook.

‘Good thing he’s got an extra pair of hands,’ she thinks smugly to herself, stepping up next to him at the counter - him taking the stove, her covering prep - and as she slots in beside him, she has the immense satisfaction of a feeling of _right-_ ness. She’s back where she belongs, next to her brother, her heart, and it’s perfect.

Until she moves to prep the cranberries at the exact same time he picks up the bowl, and she’s left reaching for something that’s not there anymore.

There’s a split second - so fast she’s pretty sure Ren didn’t even notice - that passes between the two of them, where Lup’s hand slowly flexes, brow creasing in perplexity, and she meets Taako’s eye - Taako, who looks just as baffled as she feels, and also - hurt? She catches a flash of something like pain in his expression, and she doesn’t know why.

And then, to her growing confusion, his expression _shutters_ _off_ into a smirk, and he pushes the bowl into her hands, and equilibrium is established again. Now that she’s in place beside him, they fall into their usual routine, bickering playfully with each other as they cook, passing ingredients back and forth to one another wordlessly, so easily one could mistake them for a single being.

But it doesn’t come as quickly as it once did, and Lup keeps thinking about that first moment, before they’d synced up, and can’t ward off an unsettled feeling in her gut.

The jeweled rice pilaf is bomb, naturally, but she doesn’t taste it much.


	2. You Go On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup makes a poorly thought out bakery run, and comes to a realization.

The second time it happens is with Barry, and that one cuts deep. They’re supposed to meet up with Kravitz in an hour - he has an actual job lined up for them this time, instead of more training drills, and Lup wants to make sure Barry’s okay. They’ve talked about this new gig - what it entails, what it means in the short term, while they’re alive, what it’s gonna mean in the long term after he’s died, then after she’s died… They’ve talked about Kravitz, whom neither know _especially_ well, but so far he’s done well by Taako, _and_ he’s gotten them off the Raven Queen’s hit list and onto her payroll, so they figure he’s a cool enough dude.

And now, her brother’s bone-buddy is actually taking them out on a job. She’s pretty psyched - the switch from Lich to Reaper was pretty easy for her, and she was excited to set some fires again - but she hadn’t been the one studying necromantic theory for years before the IPRE mission even took off. She knows he’s left lichdom behind, and she _knows_ he’s gonna be good at the job, but he also… she doesn’t want to say _sympathetic_ , but he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with their new gig yet.

She thought she’d surprise him with a treat - “home-made” muffins, lovingly stolen from the Taako-brand bakery down the street. Ren had moved fast on that one. Lup was honestly beyond impressed with what the two of them had accomplished so far.

She’s just finished arguing with the salesperson over whether or not she should pay (she knows Taako would never begrudge her a few measly muffins from his developing multimedia empire, and she’s _definitely_ not paying cool hard gold to fuel his ego). Her spoils, a baker’s dozen of Barry’s favorite, peanut-butter banana with chocolate chips, nestle sweetly in a basket she’s carrying under one arm as she makes her “great escape” to the amusement and befuddlement of her brother’s employee. She’s almost made it to the door when it bursts open, knocking her back.

A quick mage hand rescues her ill-gotten gains, and Lup looks up, coming face-to-red-face with Barry.

“Hey babe!” She gives him a quick peck on the cheek, pulling back with a grin. “You caught me! I was hoping to…”

She trails off as she takes in his appearance - flushed and out of breath, hair and clothing mussed, glasses askew… all looks that she _definitely_ liked to see on her Barrold, if it wasn’t for the look of near panic lingering in his eyes, melting into relief and embarrassment the longer they stand there, staring at each other.

She bids a hurried goodbye to the shopkeep, ushering Barry out. He reaches for her hand, and she grabs his, and together they hightail it out of town. To the untrained eye, they might look like two honeymooners bashfully running home. But Barry keeps ducking his head, eyes glancing towards her then away, and she squeezes his hand to comfort him, comforted in turn when he squeezes back.

They’re well out of town, on the winding worn dirt path that leads to their home, when she finally speaks.

“Babe? What happened?” She doesn’t beat around the bush - half a century together has broken down those barriers between them, and they’ve spent too much time together to be nervous.

She’s surprised when he stutters at first. “Y-you weren’t there wh-when I woke up.” He says it with a weight that she doesn’t quite catch the meaning of, and her lips purse in contemplation.

“Yeah? I was gonna surprise you, Bar-bar. See?” She lifts the lid off of her baker’s dozen, letting the smell of freshly baked peanut-butter-banana-chocolate muffins waft in the air. “See? I was gonna wake you with these bad boys.”

He leans in, and she’s gratified to see his eyes widen just a little in appreciation at the smell, but he still doesn’t seem mollified. “You… left a note,” he says.

“Yes?” she says, still not following. “I didn’t want you to-” And that’s when it hits her - the last time she’d left a note. “Oh. Oh, _babe_ , I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

“I know, I know, I just…” He squeezes her hand again, and she returns it tightly. Their fingers might be crushed by the end of this, but she’s still cherishing every bodily sensation she gets, doubly so if it’s to help Barry. “I woke up by myself, and for a second, I thought-”

“ _No,_ ” she says, as firm and unyielding as she can be to banish Barry’s fears. She stops them along the dirt path, turning to him and cupping his face with her free hand. “No, Barry, _never_ again, okay? I’m not going _anywhere_.”

He puts his hand on top of hers, leaning into her touch, and says, again, “I know. I know.”

But in the days to come, she starts to notice little things she hadn’t before - the way he startles ever so slightly, when she walks into a room.  The way he lingers near her, hovering with her as often as he can, rarely letting her out of his sight if he can help it. She notices how, now that everything is over, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, outside of work and being with her.

She wants to think it’s just started, that it hasn’t been happening before, was sparked by her unfortunate bakery run. She wants to think that, but deep down, to her chagrin, she knows the truth. This isn’t new, she just hasn’t noticed it. She’s been so caught up in being corporeal again, she’s missed all these signs from the two people she loves most. They’re _hurt_ , somehow, and she’s only just realizing it, and she could _kick_ herself, it’s so obvious now. She tries to push and prod, wheedle it out of them, but Barry offers platitudes, and Taako keeps shutting himself behind this brand new _wall_ of his, and she’s about ready to scream.

She just wants them to be okay, like they were before.

Is that so wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finished writing this (just gotta do the editing to the third chapter) and it's hillarious bc I think each chapter is like, half again longer than the chapter before it. Ridonkulous.   
> Next chap will be up by Friiidayyy assuming I get the time to type it up.
> 
> Thanks for your lovely comments, and remember, I'm still taking prompts for this little post canon auish thing!


	3. Open the Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kravitz reaches out to Lup.

Kravitz ends up being the unfortunate recipient of her wrath. After observing their first mission out, he’s _yet_ _again_ upped their training. Says something along the lines of “Taako would _kill_ me if I let one of you die so soon on the job,” and while she can’t fault the logic, she’s feeling a lot more sympathetic for Taako and his time at the Bureau, training for Wonderland.

She and Barry are exhausted by the time Kravitz recalls that, hey, they’re _still mortals_ , and that maybe they could use a break. Barry’s wheezing, leaning against her, and she’s only really standing by leaning back. Taako’s bone-boy has the decency to look embarrassed, at least, before clearing his throat and suggesting they call it a day.

The two of them jump on the suggestion, more than ready to rest the day’s aches away. Then, Kravitz stops her.

“Lup? A word, if you don’t mind.”

She doesn’t miss the subtle hesitation from Barry (she hasn’t missed it for the past two weeks, now that she knows what to look for), but gives him a smile and a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be just a sec, Barr,” and, somewhat reluctantly, he leaves.

She turns back to Kravitz, pushing her sweaty, curly hair out of her face and cursing how heavy it feels on her tired body. “What’s shakin’, Cadavritz?”

Predictably, he winces at the nickname, which brings a grin to her face. “Please don’t tell Taako that one.”

“Too late; Taako’s the one who came up with it. So?”

He gets serious again. He’s got a weird way of doing that, she thinks, of moving between the awkward, dorky Kravitz her brother loves to tease, and and this suave, painfully sincere gentleman that has somehow wormed his way into her brother’s heart, despite the walls he’s got up.

(She tries to put the walls out of her mind, but they’re never far from thought.)

“How are you doing?”

The question takes her by surprise, but she’s used to rolling with the punches. “Are you talking about training? I mean, I’m pretty sure you haven’t broken _every_ bone in my body-”

“Lup…”

“-but you’d probably be the expert on that, eh, Skeletor?”

He smiles, wryly. “Well, it’s good to know that training isn’t actually killing you.”

“Oh, don’t be so sure.”

He laughs, and she grins, ribs too sore to join in. “Hopefully it’ll take more than sparring to do you in. But I meant more… in general. With your…” he clears his throat, stalling for a way to put this delicately. “Your body?”

She stares at him. “What about my body?”

“Getting used to it? After being, well, incorporeal for so long.” She relaxes, incrementally. “Taako mentioned you’d been acting odd,” she tenses again, “and I wanted to make sure training wasn’t the issue.”

She can’t help but feel a little hurt - the fact that Taako said anything to Kravitz, apparently so casually or frequently that Kravitz thought to mention it, without saying anything directly to her, stings. She tries not to let it show, replying with a casual, “Oh?” She can hear the slight strain in her own voice, but, fortunately or unfortunately, Kravitz misses it. “What did he say?”

“Just that he’d had a few awkward bumps with you,” and that stings too, because she’s _noticed_ , and hasn’t her brother seen that? Why is he going through Kravitz instead of to _her_? “Some of it was twin stuff, and I don’t really… understand that, but I know it’s important to the both of you.”

She huffs, turning away. “Well, if he feels that way, he _could_ talk to me himself,” she says, rather archly.

“I’m… sorry?” he hazards. She doesn’t dignify that with a response, choosing to sit and fume for a moment instead. Here, she’d been trying to make amends for- for _whatever_ had gotten between her and her twin, and instead of talking to her, like he _usually_ did, he’d gotten so head-over-heels that he’d rather complain to his boy toy than come to her. Kravitz, still waiting for a response from her, sighs. “Look, I know that you and I don’t know each other very well yet, but Taako’s worried about you, and Barry is-”

She’s turning to deck him before she can even _think_. Or, well. She’s trying to deck him. As her fist makes contact, his form dissolves, melting into a cloud that slips back a few steps before reforming into his work face.

“Okay,” he says as she readies another swing. He’s using that _stupid_ work accent, and that pisses her off more. “We can do it this way.”

She shouts, launching herself at him. She’s burned through her spells for the day, but of her and Taako, she’s always been the one more capable of physical combat, and with over two-hundred years of fighting dirty under her belt, plus the training from the last two months, she puts up a fair fight, keeping Kravitz on the defensive as she _wails_ on him. It’s not _fair_ \- Taako’s her twin, her heart, and she and Barry have survived for years on their love alone - what’s _wrong_? What happened, why won’t they _talk_ to her, and why - _why_ \- is Kravitz freely privy to their thoughts, when _she_ _’s_ been trying for weeks to get anything from them? Her anger flows out through her, and for a moment she feels like a lich again, unfettered and wholly lost to the strength of her own emotions.

But, although her frenzied movement keeps Kravitz on the defensive, he does have one distinct advantage - she’s corporeal now, and he is, in essence, tireless. He doesn’t need sleep or rest, though he takes it occasionally, and he can create new forms for himself at will, while she’s stuck in flesh and bone.

Her lungs are raw by the time her swings start to slow, deadened by the ache from her earlier workout, and she realizes she’s been screaming at him, her inner monologue less “inner” than she thought. Panting, wrecked, she gives him one last hay-maker, swinging wide. He easily catches it with one hand.

She doesn’t have the strength to struggle against his grip, and he watches, quiet and patient, as she catches her breath. He waits until it’s evened out, until she’s sagging, not quite leaning on him, before he speaks. “You’ve all been through a lot, you know.” She gives him a heated glare. That’s easily the understatement of the millennium, and he seems to realize this, shrugging apologetically. “Sorry. I meant, individually. You seven had a hundred years where you were able to rely on one another, and that,” he gives that baffled half-laugh he makes any time he talks about their century running from the Hunger, one part incredulity and two parts awe, “that in itself is amazing. But you had each other.” He grows somber. “The last ten, twelve years- barring this last year, I suppose - all of you were alone.”

“What’s your point?” she rasps.

“The living _change,_ Lup,” he says softly. “Especially under stress. Taako never told me anything about his life, before the day of Story and Song, but… I could infer some things. He had to learn how to be a different person without you, and I don’t think he knows how to reconcile that life with this one.”

“…” She knows this. He’s not saying anything new, she _knows_ Taako lived without her, but… time didn’t pass the same way for her during that time.

“Over your journey, you all… died, a lot, at points, right? Did you ever have, say, a year when you died early? Before you became a lich, I mean.” She blinks at him. “Did you ever come back and find they were different, after that year?”

She’s ready to shake her head - they’d learned a lot, grown over the century, in knowledge, in power, in strength - but they were still all the same people, right? And that hesitation catches her, makes her think again…

And her thoughts turn to Lucretia. They turn to the cycle of the Judges. And how, from her vantage point, her friend had gone from a shy journalist to a cool, collected leader, unbreakable under stress. And from that point of view, she thinks about Taako, about Barry, about what they’ve been through, and tries to imagine it.

She tries to imagine being without her love, without her heart, for ten years, and how she’d change. She thinks about her own time in the Umbra Staff.

She thinks… she might get it. 

* * *

 

Three days later finds the four of them at the shittiest faux-glam karaoke bar Taako could find in Neverwinter. They go in disguise, alter self and simple glamors applied to keep from drawing a crowd, just for tonight, and now they’re sitting in a circular booth, laughing and taking shots as Taako and Lup attempt to get Kravitz absolutely _trashed,_ enjoying a small vacation while they listen to the bar’s drunken patrons butcher popular artists.

Lup is… she’s doing okay. She’s been mulling over what Kravitz said, and it’s helped, a little. Part of it is swallowing a painful truth - she missed out on ten years with her favorite people. And that hurts. In some ways, they’ve learned to live without her, and that hurts too.

But, they’re both trying to reach out to her again, just… differently than how they used to. She doesn’t mesh perfectly with them anymore, because they’ve changed, and she’s been trying to deny that, trying to force them into how they _should_ be, how they are in her mind… and that’s never going to work.

There are parts that haven’t changed, too, and she clings to those as she works to adjust to what has. For instance, Taako stands up, almost falling into Kravitz’s lap when he overbalances.

“Lup! Kickers at ten,” he declares, and when she looks over, sure enough there’s a human over by the pool table, wearing a pair of sick knee-high boots.

A shared glance, and the twins are on their way over, ready to scam the soles off of these poor schmucks. She glances back to Barry, checking on him, and he smiles, lifting a glass towards them.

She and Taako let their opponent rack, and Taako breaks beautifully to the sound of a half-orc butchering Fantasy Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” Barry looks over at her from time to time, and when their eyes meet, they both grin, but she also sees him become engrossed in some conversation with Kravitz… and that’s okay. When Taako manages to clear the table almost alone, she just hi-fives him, cackling.

She’s missed a lot of time with them. Her boys have changed. But, so has she. She’s learned patience, and she can use that while her boys adjust to her being back in the flesh.

And as she and Taako stride back to the table, victorious and laughing, a pair of boots slung over their shoulders, she knows - they’re going to be okay. On the stage, the half-orc finishes:

_“My heart will… go on and… onnnnn.”_

Her heart, and the people in it, will too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that :3 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! And if you have prompts for more Reaper Family, hit me up at Mercurial-writ on tumblr, or @Mercuryhomophony on Twitter, or just comment here :3


End file.
